Several of Jerusalem’s non-kosher eateries are bracing themselves for various degrees of protest and even possible violence throughout the week.

Despite winning a lawsuit filed against them in 2007 for selling hametz during Pessah, these businesses are still blacklisted by segments of the religious population in the capital.

“They tried to burn our store twice last year,” says Lahav, “once a few days before Pessah. The second time, during the middle of the day, they tried to light the gas on fire. The police didn’t catch them.”

"Every year the level of koshering utensils, which were never koshered in the past, rises; demands to replace utensils that were not replaced in previous years, which adds up to expenses of millions of shekels," said an Eilat hotelier this week, complaining about the stricter requirements of making Eilat hotels kosher for the week of Passover.

"In previous years we were able to reach agreements, but this year the Eilat Religious Council is putting on more pressure and larger monetary demands than in the past," said the hotelier, complaining about the requirements.

Economic crisis? Not at Tel Aviv's hotels. No less than a thousand people forked over NIS 1,100 to partake of the seder at the Hilton Hotel in the city.

Not only was the Hilton fully occupied: It also sold seder meals on wheels, takeaway feasts that cost even more per diner - 5,000 of them, in fact.

The Sheraton reported 90% occupancy and 350 people registered for its seder feasts at its various dining venues. The version with the cantor and the five courses cost NIS 990 per person, and there wasn't a seat to be had.

The seder sans singer cost NIS 700 per seat. Moving on to the Dan Hotel, we find seders starting at NIS 1,050 per adult and NIS 790 per child, and almost full occupancy as well. And so it went with the other big hotels.

Israeli food manufacturers enjoyed a 30 percent increase in the demand for matza products from Jewish communities in the US and Europe, according to a report by the Israel Export Institute.

Last year, export sales of matza rose 30% year-on-year and were worth $15.6 million compared with 12m. in 2008.

The surge was mainly led by sales to the US, which made up 64% of the total sales volume and amounted to $10m. Over the past six years, export sales of matza more than doubled from $7m. in 2003 to $15.6m. in 2009.

It's Monday night at Friends of the Israel Defense Forces recreational center in Givat Olga, and Maj. Malachi Rabad, rabbi of the IDF Human Resources Directorate, is responsible for leading the 580 assembled lone soldiers through the annual holiday ritual.

The IDF currently includes 4,600 lone soldiers, each without family to return to in Israel when on leave.

About 40 percent were born in Israel, but were either raised in broken homes or are otherwise estranged from their families. The rest are soldiers who immigrated to Israel alone.

A few dozen Ethiopians on Sunday protested in Jerusalem for not being able to join their families for the holiday.

The immigrants displayed aPassoverSeder table in front of the Prime Minister's Office, on which they placed pictures of their family members – some of which have been waiting to make aliyah for many years. Next to the pictures, the immigrants placed bowls of Maror (bitter herbs) to symbolize the hardship they have experienced because of the long distance between them and their families.

Rabbi Farber of the Itim Center, who married the Serdukovs, told Haaretz, "After years of experience, we came to the conclusion that we could no longer allow militants in the rabbinate to control Judaism in the State of Israel. Not registering converts does harm to their basic rights, especially on the eve of Passover, when we are supposed to remember that we were once strangers in Egypt, and we have a moral obligation to care for those whose position in society is fragile.

A convert to Judaism and her husband petitioned the High Court of Justice on Sunday against four rabbis who have allegedly repeatedly refused to grant marriage licenses to Israelis who converted to Judaism in Orthodox religious courts recognized by the state.

The petition was filed by Alina and Maxim Sardiyokov, Itim – The Jewish Life Information Center, and three other public petitioners including Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Elazar Stern, former commander of the IDF’s Manpower Directorate.

"This petition,” wrote attorney Aviad Hacohen, dean of Shaarei Mishpat Academic College in Hod Hasharon, “recounts the shameful and unacceptable practice whereby marriage registrars throughout the country refuse to register converts who converted according to the law and possess official certificates of conversion to Judaism issued by the State of Israel.”

Staff-Sergeant Ilan Sviatkovsky, who was killed inclasheswith terrorists in Gaza Friday, died before he could complete his conversion to Judaism, but on Sunday he was given a Jewish burial in Rishon Letzion's cemetery.

Sviatkovsky, who immigrated to Israel from Uzbekistan with his family in 1994, was on his way to completing a controversial IDF conversion process called the Nativ Course. He planned on completing the process immediately upon returning from his service in Gaza.

…Rabbi Shaul Farber, head of ITIM, a nonprofit that helps potential converts navigate rabbinic bureaucracy, is one of the petitioners to the High Court. He told Ynet that Sviatkovsky deserved a Jewish burial according to the halacha.

"Imagine receiving your drivers' license in Tel Aviv, only to be told in Ashkelon or Ashdod that you can't drive because your license isn't recognized there. The same is happening with conversion certificates."

"These four rabbis are brutalizing genuine converts in order to achieve their own political aspirations," Rabbi Farber charged.

"They're trying to show how haredi they are and are doing so on the backs of the converts. It gives them credibility in ultra-Orthodox circles, which seek to undermine the validity of the conversions performed in the state Conversion Authority."

The time has come to do away with the Chief Rabbinate. This is the only conclusion any clear-headed observer, concerned about the way Judaism is being represented in the public domain, can draw.

The Barzilai Medical Center fiasco, the disparaging treatment of converts and the tendency toward holier-than-thou stringency are just some of the most publicized recent examples of how the Chief Rabbinate has become not merely obsolete but downright inimical to the Judaism it purportedly represents.

Held captive by extreme haredi elements, it is failing to uphold its responsibility to faithfully represent the rabbinic tradition while grappling with the contemporary challenges faced by the reborn Jewish nation.

But this was not history in the making; no walls were being cracked. This was cynical Israeli politics at its worst.

…The State of Israel has become matchmaker for these 350,000 people. They are allowed to get married, but only so long as they marry one another. Yisrael Beiteinu may have ticked a box on its election checklist, but it has created an absurd situation.

Israel has an obligation to these citizens. They were brought to Israel by Israel, in accordance with the state's noble vision of "ingathering the exiles"- and also in no small part with the hope of increasing the Jewish demographic (in civil if not religious terms) in Israel.

Pressure from ultra-Orthodox rabbis could lead to revoking plans to install more buses with an on-board audio-visual system for people with sensory impairments.

The rabbis who object to the system, stipulated by the law for Equality for Persons with Disabilities, say the screens could be used for unworthy purposes.

…Some of the rabbis agreed to have the screens used for commercials, which would finance the service. Egged promised to project no images or pictures on the screens, which could offend ultra-Orthodox passengers' sensibilities, but only texts.

However, the more radical ultra-Orthodox rabbis objected to having the screens installed in the first place, agreeing only to LED screens displaying the name of the next station.

The Jerusalem Municipality Finance Committee approved a plan for the construction of a new cinema complex in the Haleom parking lot opposite the Supreme Court, on condition that it remains closed during Shabbat, Israel Radio reported Thursday.

Following the report, the Forum for a Free Jerusalem movement said that a cinema closed on Shabbat would not fulfill the needs of the secular population in the city.

The Chief Rabbinate has announced that it will support a more moderate version of a bill submitted to the Knesset to extend the powers of the state rabbinical courts than the one being pushed by the haredi parties.

The moderate bill was submitted by Zevulun Orlev (Habayit Hayehudi) and called for allowing the rabbinical courts to arbitrate monetary disputes according to Halacha, in cases where both sides agree to do so.

The more far-reaching bill, submitted by MKs Uri Maklev and Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) calls not only for that, but also for granting the rabbinical court exclusive right to hear all disputes stemming from the court’s ruling on divorce agreements.

Rabbis close to Takana, the group that originally alleged sexual misconduct on the part of Rabbi Mordechai (Moti) Elon, say police are not pressing charges against the educator because Takana had promised confidentiality to Elon's former students who had complained.

"The police were dependent on us but we could do nothing," one rabbi said.

…Rabbis involved in the case said they were not surprised by the apparent closing of the police file. "In any case, the most serious incidents, to our minds, are not criminal according to the existing law. There is no such thing as a criminal offense stemming from the authority and powers of a rabbi" when the individuals involved are over 18, a source in the group said.

In honor of Israel Pride Month, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) teams up with the Consulate General of Israel this April to present the “Out in Israel” film series—a special showcase of new, recent and classic films from Israel exploring lesbian and gay life, imagery and stories.

The High Court of Justice has handed down a decision that is indeed a victory for Ashdod Chief Rabbi Yosef Sheinen Shlita in the ongoing saga of a bakery owned by a Jew for “J”, owned and operated by Penina Comforti.

…In the ruling released on Tuesday, Justices Eliezer Rivlin, Salim Jubran and Ayala Procaccia explained that in order for the bakery to receive a kashrut certificate from the local rabbinate, it must comply with the directives set forth.

Hesder army-students studying in Yeshivat Har Brachah were instructed to report to the Bakum (IDF Induction Center) Wednesday and choose which Hesder yeshiva they would like to enroll in.

They are being officially removed from the Har Brachah hesder arrangement, in accordance with a political decision made by Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Several students agreed to “formally” be enrolled in another yeshiva, while continuing to study in Har Brachah.

Others announced that they are “on strike,” complaining that the decision by Barak is totally political and is harmful to the army. Still others are currently in the army, making the issue not relevant to them at present.

Dramatic shifts to both the Left and the Right over the past 50 years have left the modern Orthodox and national-religious movements fragmented. These divisions have been causing friction as some factions push for more stringent interpretations of Halacha, while others are pushing boundaries on formally sacrosanct issues.

…With the future of the movement uncertain, rabbis, intellectuals and members of the modern Orthodox community will be coming together at a conference during Pessah titled “Is modern Orthodoxy an endangered species?”

The conference is co-sponsored by the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, a US-based modern Orthodox organization, and Ne’emanei Torah V’Avoda, which is based in Israel. This is their first joint project.

The framework allows the soldiers to maintain their way of life, including scheduled time for prayers, Torah classes, kosher l’Mehadrin food, and the like. Rabbi Schwartz was originally shunned and persecuted within his own hareidi public for his work in Nahal Hareidi.

U.S.-born rabbi Richard Hirsch is the first Reform rabbi to receive the honor of lighting a torch during the state's official Independence Day ceremony.

A committee under the auspices of the prime minister's office named him this week as one of fourteen Israelis to participate in the upcoming event on Mt. Herzl in April, which hundreds of thousands of Israelis traditionally watch either live in Jerusalem or on their TV screens.

After an introductory lecture on the development of the denominations, especially Reform, we went on to four encounters: …Conservative kibbutz, Hannaton…Kibbutz Lavi, one of the pillars of the Orthodox kibbutz movement…Khirbet Ammudim, a few miles away, where the ruin of a third century synagogue sits in the middle of a cow pasture….Kibbutz Yagur, famous for leading the way in producing an elaborate Passover seder every year, with an original Haggadah and original music.

Two hundred Egged buses were plastered with posters Sunday that call for the construction of the third temple "quickly and in our time". The posters carry a drawing of Temple Mount without the mosques situated there.

A right-wing group announced a campaign Sunday ahead of the Passover festival calling for the construction of the Jewish Temple on the location of the existing temple mount mosques.

The extreme right-wing Our Land of Israel party (Eretz Israel Shelanu) said it intended to mount an extensive bus campaign, with the slogan "May the Temple be built in our lifetime," along with an artist's rendition of the completed Temple.

Four National Union MKs overcame police attempts to block them from touring the Old City near the Temple Mount on Wednesday.

Lawmakers Uri Ariel, Ya’acov Katz, Michael Ben-Ari and Arye Eldad said it was their right to walk around in any section of Jerusalem they pleased, and expressed outrage when their attempt to tour in the vicinity of the Temple Mount was blocked by several special patrol officers armed with machine guns who had been deployed to the site by Jerusalem police chief Cmdr. Aharon Franco.

The writer served as deputy director of communications and policy planning in the Prime Minister’s Office from 1996 to 1999. He is the Founder and Chairman of Shavei Israel, which assists the Bnei Menashe to return to the Jewish people.

Prime Minister, I appeal to you: Please bring the Bnei Menashe home to the Jewish state.

Four months ago, I met with Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Interior Minister Eli Yishai, both of whom expressed their support for bringing the remaining members of the community to Israel. All that is needed now is for your government to take the courageous and historic decision to reunite this lost tribe with our people.

The director general of the Prime Minister's Office, Eyal Gabai, is expected to recommend to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reverse the previous cabinet decision on moving the new emergency room at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.

Instead, Gabai will recommend to Netanyahu to move the graves at the site that prevented building the emergency room, which is to be reinforced against rocket attacks, at its original site.

Some 200 people held a rally on Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard on Friday afternoon, in protest of the cabinet'sdecisionto accept Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman's demand and relocate the emergency room at the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon due to the discovery of ancient graves.

The good news to emerge from the Barzilai Medical Center emergency room imbroglio is that public outrage in this country cannot be completely overlooked – that it can still impose second thoughts on perverse government decisions.

The bad news is that our fundamentally flawed coalition system facilitates the infliction of flagrantly unreasonable decisions in the first place.

Now choose life, Rabbi Litzman. Choose the living over the dead; choose the blessings of the Lord above over the bizarre curses of the ephemeral “Atra Kadisha” organization headed by Rabbi Shmidel; choose the lives of our children over the graves of our forefathers (or whoever it is that is buried there; nobody is able to provide a clear answer about that.)

The State Control Committee yesterday called on the cabinet to revoke its decision to relocate the planned bomb-proof emergency room at Ashkelon's Barzilai Medical Center because of ancient graves found on the site.

The Knesset State Control Committee on Wednesday urgently called on Prime Minister (and official health minister) Binyamin Netanyahu to dismantle the task force his office appointed to recommend ways to resolve the dispute over where to build a reinforced emergency department in Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center.

Kadima and Meretz decided on Tuesday to cancel a special session of the Knesset that had been planned for Wednesday to debate Sunday's cabinet decision to move a proposed new emergency room planned for Ashkelon's Barzilai Medical Center due to graves found on the site.

Dr. Eitan Hai-Am, who recently resigned from his post as Health Ministry director-general over the cabinet's controversial decision torelocatethe emergency room at Ashkelon's Barzilai Medical Center because of ancient graves found on the site, said the task force appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to review the issue is not professional enough.

Q: Don't you find it infuriating that an anti-Zionist organization like the Atra Kadisha should determine the fates of hundreds of thousands of residents of the south?

A: I have great respect for the same Jewish values and for those who take care to safeguard Jewish graves, and not just Jewish graves, but graves in general, and the dignity of those to whom the graves are important.

Every grave must be respected, but an attempt must also be made to find solutions and they, the Atra Kadisha people, have shown flexibility in dozens of cases in the past. Why are they being so rigid this time? I can't answer that.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed officials to reevaluate Sunday's controversial cabinet decision to relocate the planned construction of a bomb-proof emergency room for the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon due to ultra-Orthodox objections after ancient burial grounds were discovered under the original site.

In a move seen as caving in to public pressure, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday instructed his director-general, Eyal Gabai, to head a task force that would reevaluate Sunday’s cabinet decision to relocate the proposed reinforced emergency room for Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center.

There is no halachic reason to change the site for the fortified emergency room at Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center due to the presence of ancient bones there, even if they are Jewish, an expert on Jewish law at Bar-Ilan University toldThe Jerusalem Poston Sunday.

According to Dr. Jeffrey Woolf, a senior lecturer in the university’s Talmud department and director of the school’s institute for the study of post-Talmudic Jewish law, Halacha includes procedures for transporting human remains and does not contain an absolute prohibition on such transport.

Following a torrent of criticism over the decision to change the location of the planned reinforced emergency department for Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu instructed Prime Minister's Office Director-General Eyal Gabai to head a team that will examine the various options for construction of the emergency department, so that "no lives will be endangered."

Officials in Jerusalem on Monday claimed that a political deal betweenYisrael BeitenuChairman Avigdor Lieberman and Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman of the ultra-OrthodoxUnited Torah Judaism(UTJ) party was behind cabinet's controversialapproval of the costly relocation of Barzilai Medical Center's new fortified emergency room building to a more remote spot so as not to disturb ancient graves found on the site.

…This change in government will also allow us to begin to address the third challenge, that of loosening the Haredi grip on Israeli society. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, by and large, don’t serve in the army, and their schools often condemn their children to lives of poverty.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the Haredi sector tries to impose its way of life on others.

This situation is unsustainable, both for Israeli society and for the Haredi community. It has persisted because the ultra-Orthodox parties have held the balance of power between the left and the right, which have long been divided when it comes to the peace process.

If the center-right and center-left — Likud, Kadima and Labor — can come together, they will be able to restore a proper balance to the state’s relations with the Haredi sector.

"To help you be Israel's masbirim [information purveyors], we have concentrated for you the biggest myths you are likely to encounter, and, contrariwise, the true facts - so that you will be able in real time to present them to your interlocutors and foment a change in their opinions. Together we will change the picture!"

Myth: Israel attaches greater importance to the bones of dead people from ancient times than to living people.

Myth: Israel is actually a theocracy.

Myth: Israel customarily ignores official guests who arrive after the start of Shabbat or after midnight, and does not hold ceremonies of welcome or farewell for them at the airport.

Myth: Israel is a primitive country steeped in mystical hokum and magical thinking. In Israel the economic and political bigwigs subordinate themselves to a celebrity rabbi known as "The Roentgen," or the "X-Ray Rabbi."

About three years ago, Russian Christian oligarch Andrei Bykov gave a statue of King David playing a harp as a gift to the Holy City.

Bykov asked that his statue be displayed at the entrance to the site of the legendary king’s tomb, on Mount Zion, which is also the site of Cenacle, believed to be the location of the Last Supper.

A statue in Jerusalem is no simple matter, and then-mayor Uri Lupolianski wisely sought out the best kosher stamp of approval, to ensure it would not be considered a graven image. The municipality spokesman then released a statement saying that Rabbi Shalom Elyashiv himself had approved. Today, Yehoshua Pollak, who was deputy mayor at the time, says that Elyashiv’s approval was likely unwritten.

The majority in Israel allows the ultra-Orthodox to issue decrees in the most basic matters of identity because of their political power. This majority is doing itself a grave moral injustice, especially to ultra-Orthodox society. The majority can wean the ultra-Orthodox from their absolute dependence on the state, thus turning them, albeit against their will, into a productive community.

If the majority does so, then by force of reality, like the ultra-Orthodox in America, in addition to scholars who study the Torah there will be ultra-Orthodox scientists, doctors, engineers and psychologists. They will be productive, rather than dependent. Thus, one may assume, their appetite to impose on the majority's lifestyle that it objects to will diminish.

The fight between ultra-Orthodox groups and the Shefa Shuk supermarket chain - which caters to that population - is threatening to become violent: Senior Shefa Shuk executives, who themselves are ultra-Orthodox, have been receiving threats over the telephone over the past few weeks, including death threats.

Neighborhoods with large ultra-Orthodox populations have been flooded in recent weeks by a poster campaign to convince the Haredi public to boycott Shefa Shuk.

Esther-Malki Starik, 26, grew up in the Toldot Aharon Hasidic sect, one of the most insular Haredi communities.

She was first married at 18 and divorced a year later (she does not wish to elaborate on the circumstances); she was married to Anshin for three years.

Young Haredi women in her sect rarely speak to the press, but Starik is determined to expose the injustice done to her: the fact that her husband's mental instability was concealed from her for years.

She and her family cannot understand how, in a society in which "clarifications" are made about every prospective bride and groom, the fact that Nachman Anshin had been violent in the past was hidden, as the court ruling notes.

Today's Haredi rabbis believe they are the direct spiritual descendants of Moses and the scholars of the Talmud, but their refusal to see the suffering of individuals and adapt halakha accordingly, their insistence that "innovation is forbidden by the Torah," is much more reminiscent of Karaism, as they blindly cling to ancient texts.

Over the last two weeks, one ultra-Orthodox leader, the centenarian Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, has ordered his emissaries in the Knesset to block any new legislation designed to make the conversion process more friendly for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are not recognized by the Rabbinate as Jews.

He also wants to force the government to change the plans to build a much needed bomb-proof emergency ward at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.

In both cases, Elyashiv threatened a coalition crisis to uphold the most hidebound version of halakha, despite the fact that many Orthodox, even Haredi, rabbis believe that there is room for flexibility.

…last week a new player joined the team at the mayor’s office: Ya’acov Izak, whose task will be to find a way to publish the mayor’s activities in the haredi press.

According to sources close to the Mayor’s Office, the idea is that once haredi residents read about the mayor’s efforts to improve their conditions and their quality of life in their own newspapers, they might refrain from demonstrating almost every weekend, a legal activity that is causing substantial damage to the city’s image.

Israel could become the first country to ban the wearing of animal fur; a move campaigners hope will encourage other countries to follow suit.

However, ultra-Orthodox MPs are blocking the final steps in the process because many of their constituents traditionally wear sable hats known as shtreimels, which they argue are part of their cultural identity.

A new book published ahead of thePassoverholiday does not reveal the [Coca Cola’s] secret formula worth millions, but its authors – who are experts in the field of kashrut – definitely reveal a number of dark secrets about the food industry.

…Rabbi Aryeh Goldberg, deputy director of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe, notes that the book is unique as it is appeals to the entire public and not just to the small community of people involved and specializing in kashrut issues.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel to delay construction on a residential project in Jaffa believed by some residents to be part of a private effort to “Judaize” the area.

You might have to go all the way to Manhattan, or at least take a quick trip to Ashdod at the right time, to find an important rabbi with a hat and beard who openly deviates from the official Haredi line.

One such rabbi is Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto.

"We are against mixing religion and politics. Lies and flattery married to each other: That's politics. We will never have anything to do with politics - for eternity," said Rabbi Pinto - and much more.